While there is a slight increase of Jews "on the left" connecting their politics to their spirituality,[citation needed] this is a somewhat new phenomenon, when contrasted with the long history of secularsocialist and communist Jewish activist history (e.g., The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring) as well as Jewish anarchist activism which was not only explicitly secular but had from time to time denounced religion. From the late 1880s through the mid-1950s, there was a range of Jewish left newspapers (and other publications) in Yiddish that covered the spectrum of Jewish left-wing political and cultural expression in Eastern and Central Europe, as well as both North and South America, and in Mandate Palestine's Yishuv, as well as the early years of the State of Israel.

A range of left-wing values vis-à-vis social justice can be traced to Jewish religious texts, including the Tanakh and later texts, which include a strong endorsement of hospitality to "the stranger" and the principle of redistribution of wealth in the Biblical idea of Jubilee—as well as a tradition of challenging authority, as exemplified by the Biblical Prophets.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews played a major role in the Social Democratic parties of Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Poland. Historian Enzo Traverso has used the term "Judeo-Marxism" to describe the innovative forms of Marxism associated with these Jewish socialists. These ranged from strongly cosmopolitan positions hostile to all forms of nationalism (as with Rosa Luxemburg and, to a lesser extent, Leon Trotsky) to positions more sympathetic to cultural nationalism (as with the Austromarxists or Vladimir Medem). Again, it is probable that most of these figures would not have considered themselves to be part of an explicitly "Jewish" left, but the significant number of Jews active in diverse movements and parties "on the left" is relevant.

As with the American revolution of 1776, the French revolution of 1789 and the German revolution of 1848, many Jews worldwide welcomed the Russian revolution of 1917, celebrating the fall of a regime that had presided over antisemitic pogroms, and believing that the new order in what was to become the Soviet Union would bring improvements in the situation of Jews in those lands. Many Jews became involved in Communist parties, constituting large proportions of their membership in many countries, including Great Britain and the U.S. There were specifically Jewish sections of many Communist parties, such as the Yevsektsiya in the Soviet Union. The Communist regime in the USSR pursued what could be characterised as ambivalent policies towards Jews and Jewish culture, at times supporting their development as a national culture (e.g., sponsoring significant Yiddish language scholarship and creating an autonomous Jewish territory in Birobidzhan), at times pursuing antisemitic purges, such as that in the wake of the so-called Doctors' plot. (See also Komzet.)

As the Jewish working class died out in the years after the Second World War, its institutions and political movements did too. The Arbeter Ring in England, for example, came to an end in the 1950s and Jewish trade unionism in the US ceased to be a major force at that time. There are, however, still some survivals of the Jewish working class left today, including the Jewish Labor Committee and Forward newspaper in New York, the Bund in Melbourne, Australia, or Labour Friends of Israel in the UK.

Meanwhile, the 1960s-1980s saw a resurgence in interest in cultural heritage and ethnic identity, prompting a renewal of interest among assimilated Jews in the West in Jewish working class culture and the various radical traditions of the Jewish past. This led to a growth in a new sort of radical Jewish organisations, interested in Yiddish culture, Jewish spirituality and social justice. For example, in the decade of 1980–1992 one organization, New Jewish Agenda, functioned as a national, multi-issue progressive membership organization with the mission of acting as a "Jewish voice on the Left and a Left voice in the Jewish Community." The Jewish Socialists' Group in Britain and Rabbi Michael Lerner's Tikkun have continued this tradition, while more recently groups like Jewdas and Heeb Magazine have taken an even more eclectic and radical approach to Jewishness. In Belgium, the Union des progressistes juifs de Belgique is, since 1969, the heir of the Jewish Communist and Bundist Solidarité movement in the Belgian Resistance, embracing the Israeli refuseniks cause as well as of the undocumented immigrants in Belgium.

In the U.S. in the last decade, the Jewish vote has gone to Democrats by 76-80%[1] in each election, leading to the reasonable conclusion that the majority of American Jews remain in at least some way more supportive of the liberal to left side of the political spectrum vs. the conservative to right side of the spectrum.

Operating in a parliamentary governmental system based on proportional representation, left-wing political parties and blocs in Israel have been able to elect members of the Knesset with varying degrees of success. Over time those parties have evolved, with some merging, others disappearing, and new parties arising.

^see Sharman Kadish Bolsheviks and British Jews, London: Frank Cass. (1992, e.g. pp.55-60, 132); Jonathan Hyman Jews in Britain During the Great War, Manchester: University of Manchester Working Papers in Economic and Social History No. 51, October (2001, e.g. p.11). The phrase was coined by Steven Bayme.